BOOK REVIEW: IN GOLD WE TREASURE

While I was in Taipei in February for a few days, I went into the 24/7 ES Lite Living bookstore. It was in a large building with thousands of new books mostly in English, but several other languages too. I found the hobby section and there were the usual Standard Catalogs of World Coins and World Paper Money, and other books in Chinese.

One of the Chinese language books also had a little English in it and it covered gold (and a little silver) coins of the world. I flipped through it and found a Southeast Asia chapter. I saw a few authentic coins but I also saw what I believe are fantasies and replicas that should be copper or silver but they were in gold.

The book's English title is In Gold We Treasure. I could not read any other information except the ISBN, which is 978-9860-14305-8 and there are 206 pages. I asked a Chinese friend there to translate the other information for me. The author is Nian Zu Lee, and the publisher is Red Ant Publishing, Taipei.

The first edition was published in 2008 and this second edition was published in 2010. It also won a National Publication Award! I am very sure the judges likely did not know that some of the pieces illustrated in it are replicas and fantasies.

The book has very high quality paper and very nice printing. It has an illustration of one Vietnamese gold wafer which is authentic. This wafer is rarely shown in any reference, so I bought the book. I have tried to find the book online using the ISBN, Title, author, publisher, etc. but I cannot find it. If anyone can find a contact about this book, please write a comment in The E-Sylum about it.

Wayne Homren, Editor

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